A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln Part 21

With the beginning of the third year of the war, more energetic measures to fill the armies were seen to be necessary; and after very hot and acrimonious debate for about a month, Congress, on March 3, 1863, pa.s.sed a national conscription law, under which all male citizens between the ages of twenty and forty-five were enrolled to const.i.tute the national forces, and the President was authorized to call them into service by draft as occasion might require. The law authorized the appointment of a provost-marshal-general, and under him a provost-marshal, a commissioner, and a surgeon, to const.i.tute a board of enrollment in each congressional district; who, with necessary deputies, were required to carry out the law by national authority, under the supervision of the provost-marshal-general.

For more than a year past, the Democratic leaders in the Northern States had a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of violent partizanship against the administration, their hostility taking mainly the form of stubborn opposition to the antislavery enactments of Congress and the emanc.i.p.ation measures of the President. They charged with loud denunciation that he was converting the maintenance of the Union into a war for abolition, and with this and other clamors had gained considerable successes in the autumn congressional elections of 1862, though not enough to break the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. General McClellan was a Democrat, and, since his removal from command, they proclaimed him a martyr to this policy, and were grooming him to be their coming presidential candidate.

The pa.s.sage of the conscription law afforded them a new pretext to a.s.sail the administration; and Democratic members of both Houses of Congress denounced it with extravagant partizan bitterness as a violation of the Const.i.tution, and subversive of popular liberty. In the mouths of vindictive cross-roads demagogues, and in the columns of irresponsible newspapers that supply the political reading among the more reckless elements of city populations, the extravagant language of Democratic leaders degenerated in many instances into unrestrained abuse and accusation. Yet, considering that this was the first conscription law ever enacted in the United States, considering the mult.i.tude of questions and difficulties attending its application, considering that the necessity of its enforcement was, in the nature of things, unwelcome to the friends of the government, and, as naturally, excited all the enmity and cunning of its foes to impede, thwart, and evade it, the law was carried out with a remarkably small proportion of delay, obstruction, or resulting violence.

Among a considerable number of individual violations of the act, in which prompt punishment prevented a repet.i.tion, only two prominent incidents arose which had what may be called a national significance. In the State of New York the partial political reaction of 1862 had caused the election of Horatio Seymour, a Democrat, as governor. A man of high character and great ability, he, nevertheless, permitted his partizan feeling to warp and color his executive functions to a dangerous extent. The spirit of his antagonism is shown in a phrase of his fourth-of-July oration:

"The Democratic organization look upon this administration as hostile to their rights and liberties; they look upon their opponents as men who would do them wrong in regard to their most sacred franchises."

Believing--perhaps honestly--the conscription law to be unconst.i.tutional, he endeavored, by protest, argument and administrative non-compliance, to impede its execution on the plea of first demanding a Supreme Court decision as to its legality. To this President Lincoln replied:

"I cannot consent to suspend the draft in New York, as you request, because, among other reasons, time is too important.... I do not object to abide a decision of the United States Supreme Court, or of the judges thereof, on the const.i.tutionality of the draft law. In fact, I should be willing to facilitate the obtaining of it; but I cannot consent to lose the time while it is being obtained. We are contending with an enemy who, as I understand, drives every able-bodied man he can reach into his ranks, very much as a butcher drives bullocks into a slaughter-pen. No time is wasted, no argument is used. This produces an army which will soon turn upon our now victorious soldiers already in the field, if they shall not be sustained by recruits as they should be."

Notwithstanding Governor Seymour's neglect to give the enrolling officers any cooperation, preparations for the draft went on in New York city without prospect of serious disturbance, except the incendiary language of low newspapers and handbills. But scarcely had the wheel begun to turn, and the drawing commenced on July 13, when a sudden riot broke out. First demolishing the enrolling-office, the crowd next attacked an adjoining block of stores, which they plundered and set on fire, refusing to let the firemen put out the flames. From this point the excitement and disorder spread over the city, which for three days was at many points subjected to the uncontrolled fury of the mob. Loud threats to destroy the New York "Tribune" office, which the inmates as vigorously prepared to defend, were made. The most savage brutality was wreaked upon colored people. The fine building of the colored Orphan Asylum, where several hundred children barely found means of escape, was plundered and set on fire. It was notable that foreigners of recent importation were the princ.i.p.al leaders and actors in this lawlessness in which two million dollars worth of property was destroyed, and several hundred persons lost their lives.

The disturbance came to an end on the night of the fourth day, when a small detachment of soldiers met a body of rioters, and firing into them, killed thirteen, and wounded eighteen more. Governor Seymour gave but little help in the disorder, and left a stain on the record of his courage by addressing a portion of the mob as "my friends." The opportune arrival of national troops restored, and thereafter maintained, quiet and safety.

Some temporary disturbance occurred in Boston, but was promptly put down, and loud appeals came from Philadelphia and Chicago to stop the draft. The final effect of the conscription law was not so much to obtain recruits for the service, as to stimulate local effort throughout the country to promote volunteering, whereby the number drafted was either greatly lessened or, in many localities, entirely avoided by filling the State quotas.

The military arrest of Clement L. Vallandigham, a Democratic member of Congress from Ohio, for incendiary language denouncing the draft, also grew to an important incident. Arrested and tried under the orders of General Burnside, a military commission found him guilty of having violated General Order No. 38, by "declaring disloyal sentiments and opinions with the object and purpose of weakening the power of the government in its efforts to suppress an unlawful rebellion"; and sentenced him to military confinement during the war. Judge Leavitt of the United States Circuit Court denied a writ of _habeas corpus_ in the case. President Lincoln regretted the arrest, but felt it imprudent to annul the action of the general and the military tribunal. Conforming to a clause of Burnside's order, he modified the sentence by sending Vallandigham south beyond the Union military lines. The affair created a great sensation, and, in a spirit of party protest, the Ohio Democrats unanimously nominated Vallandigham for governor. Vallandigham went to Richmond, held a conference with the Confederate authorities, and, by way of Bermuda, went to Canada, from whence he issued a political address. The Democrats of both Ohio and New York took up the political and legal discussion with great heat, and sent imposing committees to present long addresses to the President on the affair.

Mr. Lincoln made long written replies to both addresses of which only so much needs quoting here as concisely states his interpretation of his authority to suspend the privilege of the writ of _habeas corpus_:

"You ask, in substance, whether I really claim that I may override all the guaranteed rights of individuals, on the plea of conserving the public safety--when I may choose to say the public safety requires it.

This question, divested of the phraseology calculated to represent me as struggling for an arbitrary personal prerogative, is either simply a question who shall decide or an affirmation that n.o.body shall decide, what the public safety does require in cases of rebellion or invasion.

The Const.i.tution contemplates the question as likely to occur for decision, but it does not expressly declare who is to decide it. By necessary implication, when rebellion or invasion comes, the decision is to be made from time to time; and I think the man whom, for the time, the people have, under the Const.i.tution, made the commander-in-chief of their army and navy, is the man who holds the power and bears the responsibility of making it. If he uses the power justly, the same people will probably justify him; if he abuses it, he is in their hands, to be dealt with by all the modes they have reserved to themselves in the Const.i.tution."

Forcible and convincing as was this legal a.n.a.lysis, a single sympathetic phrase of the President's reply had a much greater popular effect:

"Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?"

The term so accurately described the character of Vallandigham, and the pointed query so touched the hearts of the Union people throughout the land whose favorite "soldier boys" had volunteered to fill the Union armies, that it rendered powerless the crafty criticism of party diatribes. The response of the people of Ohio was emphatic. At the October election Vallandigham was defeated by more than one hundred thousand majority.

In sustaining the arrest of Vallandigham, President Lincoln had acted not only within his const.i.tutional, but also strictly within his legal, authority. In the preceding March, Congress had pa.s.sed an act legalizing all orders of this character made by the President at any time during the rebellion, and accorded him full indemnity for all searches, seizures, and arrests or imprisonments made under his orders.

The act also provided:

"That, during the present rebellion, the President of the United States, whenever in his judgment the public safety may require it, is authorized to suspend the privilege of the writ of _habeas corpus_ in any case, throughout the United States or any part thereof."

About the middle of September, Mr. Lincoln's proclamation formally put the law in force, to obviate any hindering or delaying the prompt execution of the draft law.

Though Vallandigham and the Democrats of his type were unable to prevent or even delay the draft, they yet managed to enlist the sympathies and secure the adhesion of many uneducated and unthinking men by means of secret societies, known as "Knights of the Golden Circle," "The Order of American Knights," "Order of the Star," "Sons of Liberty," and by other equally high-sounding names, which they adopted and discarded in turn, as one after the other was discovered and brought into undesired prominence. The t.i.tles and grips and pa.s.swords of these secret military organizations, the turgid eloquence of their meetings, and the clandestine drill of their oath-bound members, doubtless exercised quite as much fascination on such followers as their unlawful object of aiding and abetting the Southern cause. The number of men thus enlisted in the work of inducing desertion among Union soldiers, fomenting resistance to the draft, furnishing the Confederates with arms, and conspiring to establish a Northwestern Confederacy in full accord with the South, which formed the ultimate dream of their leaders, is hard to determine.

Vallandigham, the real head of the movement, claimed five hundred thousand, and Judge Holt, in an official report, adopted that as being somewhere near the truth, though others counted them at a full million.

The government, cognizant of their existence, and able to produce abundant evidence against the ring-leaders whenever it chose to do so, wisely paid little heed to these dark-lantern proceedings, though, as was perhaps natural, military officers commanding the departments in which they were most numerous were inclined to look upon them more seriously; and Governor Morton of Indiana was much disquieted by their work in his State.

Mr. Lincoln's att.i.tude toward them was one of good-humored contempt.

"Nothing can make me believe that one hundred thousand Indiana Democrats are disloyal," he said; and maintained that there was more folly than crime in their acts. Indeed, though prolific enough of oaths and treasonable utterances, these organizations were singularly lacking in energy and initiative. Most of the attempts made against the public peace in the free States and along the northern border came, not from resident conspirators, but from Southern emissaries and their Canadian sympathizers; and even these rarely rose above the level of ordinary arson and highway robbery.

Jacob Thompson, who had been Secretary of the Interior under President Buchanan, was the princ.i.p.al agent of the Confederate government in Canada, where he carried on operations as remarkable for their impracticability as for their malignity. One plan during the summer of 1864 contemplated nothing less than seizing and holding the three great States of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, with the aid of disloyal Democrats, whereupon it was supposed Missouri and Kentucky would quickly join them and make an end of the war.

Becoming convinced, when this project fell through, that nothing could be expected from Northern Democrats he placed his reliance on Canadian sympathizers, and turned his attention to liberating the Confederate prisoners confined on Johnson's Island in Sandusky Bay and at Camp Douglas near Chicago. But both these elaborate schemes, which embraced such magnificent details as capturing the war steamer _Michigan_ on Lake Erie, came to naught. Nor did the plans to burn St. Louis and New York, and to destroy steamboats on the Mississippi River, to which he also gave his sanction, succeed much better. A very few men were tried and punished for these and similar crimes, despite the voluble protest of the Confederate government but the injuries he and his agents were able to inflict, like the acts of the Knights of the Golden Circle on the American side of the border, amounted merely to a petty annoyance, and never reached the dignity of real menace to the government.

XXVI

Burnside--Fredericksburg--A Tangle of Cross-Purposes--Hooker Succeeds Burnside--Lincoln to Hooker--Chancellorsville--Lee's Second Invasion--Lincoln's Criticisms of Hooker's Plans--Hooker Relieved--Meade--Gettysburg--Lee's Retreat--Lincoln's Letter to Meade--Lincoln's Gettysburg Address--Autumn Strategy--The Armies go into Winter Quarters

It was not without well-meditated reasons that Mr. Lincoln had so long kept McClellan in command of the Army of the Potomac. He perfectly understood that general's defects, his want of initiative, his hesitations, his delays, his never-ending complaints. But he had long foreseen the difficulty which would and did immediately arise when, on November 5, 1862, he removed him from command. Whom should he appoint as McClellan's successor? What officer would be willing and competent to play a better part? That important question had also long been considered; several promising generals had been consulted, who, as gracefully as they could, shrank from the responsibility even before it was formally offered them.

The President finally appointed General Ambrose E. Burnside to the command. He was a West Point graduate, thirty-eight years old, of handsome presence, brave and generous to a fault, and McClellan's intimate friend. He had won a favorable reputation in leading the expedition against Roanoke Island and the North Carolina coast; and, called to reinforce McClellan after the Peninsula disaster, commanded the left wing of the Army of the Potomac at Antietam. He was not covetous of the honor now given him. He had already twice declined it, and only now accepted the command as a duty under the urgent advice of members of his staff. His instincts were better than the judgment of his friends. A few brief weeks sufficed to demonstrate what he had told them--that he "was not competent to command such a large army."

The very beginning of his work proved the truth of his self-criticism.

Rejecting all the plans of campaign which were suggested to him, he found himself incapable of forming any very plausible or consistent one of his own. As a first move he concentrated his army opposite the town of Fredericksburg on the lower Rappahannock, but with such delays that General Lee had time to seize and strongly fortify the town and the important adjacent heights on the south bank; and when Burnside's army crossed on December 11, and made its main and direct attack on the formidable and practically impregnable Confederate intrenchments on the thirteenth, a crushing repulse and defeat of the Union forces, with a loss of over ten thousand killed and wounded, was the quick and direful result.

It was in a spirit of stubborn determination rather than clear, calculating courage that he renewed his orders for an attack on the fourteenth; but, dissuaded by his division and corps commanders from the rash experiment, succeeded without further damage in withdrawing his forces on the night of the fifteenth to their old camps north of the river. In manly words his report of the unfortunate battle gave generous praise to his officers and men, and a.s.sumed for himself all the responsibility for the attack and its failure. But its secondary consequences soon became irremediable. By that gloomy disaster Burnside almost completely lost the confidence of his officers and men, and rumors soon came to the President that a spirit akin to mutiny pervaded the army. When information came that, on the day after Christmas, Burnside was preparing for a new campaign, the President telegraphed him:

"I have good reason for saying you must not make a general movement of the army without letting me know."

This, naturally, brought Burnside to the President for explanation, and, after a frank and full discussion between them, Mr. Lincoln, on New Year's day, wrote the following letter to General Halleck:

"General Burnside wishes to cross the Rappahannock with his army, but his grand division commanders all oppose the movement. If in such a difficulty as this you do not help, you fail me precisely in the point for which I sought your a.s.sistance. You know what General Burnside's plan is, and it is my wish that you go with him to the ground, examine it as far as practicable, confer with the officers, getting their judgment and ascertaining their temper; in a word, gather all the elements for forming a judgment of your own, and then tell General Burnside that you do approve, or that you do not approve, his plan. Your military skill is useless to me if you will not do this."

Halleck's moral and official courage, however, failed the President in this emergency. He declined to give his military opinion, and asked to be relieved from further duties as general-in-chief. This left Mr.

Lincoln no option, and still having need of the advice of his general-in-chief on other questions, he indorsed on his own letter, "withdrawn because considered harsh by General Halleck." The complication, however, continued to grow worse, and the correspondence more strained. Burnside declared that the country had lost confidence in both the Secretary of War and the general-in-chief; also, that his own generals were unanimously opposed to again crossing the Rappahannock.

Halleck, on the contrary, urged another crossing, but that it must be made on Burnside's own decision, plan, and responsibility. Upon this the President, on January 8, 1863, again wrote Burnside:

"I understand General Halleck has sent you a letter of which this is a copy. I approve this letter. I deplore the want of concurrence with you in opinion by your general officers, but I do not see the remedy. Be cautious, and do not understand that the government or country is driving you. I do not yet see how I could profit by changing the command of the Army of the Potomac; and if I did, I should not wish to do it by accepting the resignation of your commission."

Once more Burnside issued orders against which his generals protested, and which a storm turned into the fruitless and impossible "mud march"

before he reached the intended crossings of the Rappahannock. Finally, on January 23, Burnside presented to the President the alternative of either approving an order dismissing about a dozen generals, or accepting his own resignation, and Mr. Lincoln once more had before him the difficult task of finding a new commander for the Army of the Potomac. On January 25, 1863, the President relieved Burnside and a.s.signed Major-General Joseph Hooker to duty as his successor; and in explanation of his action wrote him the following characteristic letter:

"I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appear to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and skilful soldier, which, of course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not an indispensable quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm; but I think that during General Burnside's command of the army you have taken counsel of your ambition and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country, and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall a.s.sist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it; and now beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories."

Perhaps the most remarkable thing in this letter is the evidence it gives how completely the genius of President Lincoln had by this, the middle of his presidential term, risen to the full height of his great national duties and responsibilities. From beginning to end it speaks the language and breathes the spirit of the great ruler, secure in popular confidence and official authority, equal to the great emergencies that successively rose before him. Upon General Hooker its courteous praise and frank rebuke, its generous trust and distinct note of fatherly warning, made a profound impression. He strove worthily to redeem his past indiscretions by devoting himself with great zeal and energy to improving the discipline and morale of his army, recalling its absentees, and restoring its spirit by increased drill and renewed activity. He kept the President well informed of what he was doing, and early in April submitted a plan of campaign on which Mr. Lincoln indorsed, on the eleventh of that month:

"My opinion is that just now, with the enemy directly ahead of us, there is no eligible route for us into Richmond; and consequently a question of preference between the Rappahannock route and the James River route is a contest about nothing. Hence, our prime object is the enemy's army in front of us, and is not with or about Richmond at all, unless it be incidental to the main object."

Having raised his effective force to about one hundred and thirty thousand men, and learning that Lee's army was weakened by detachments to perhaps half that number, Hooker, near the end of the month, prepared and executed a bold movement which for a while was attended with encouraging progress. Sending General Sedgwick with three army corps to make a strong demonstration and crossing below Fredericksburg, Hooker with his remaining four corps made a somewhat long and circuitous march by which he crossed both the Rappahannock and the Rapidan above the town without serious opposition, and on the evening of April 30 had his four corps at Chancellorsville, south of the Rappahannock, from whence he could advance against the rear of the enemy. But his advantage of position was neutralized by the difficulties of the ground. He was in the dense and tangled forest known as the Wilderness, and the decision and energy of his brilliant and successful advance were suddenly succeeded by a spirit of hesitation and delay in which the evident and acknowledged chances of victory were gradually lost. The enemy found time to rally from his surprise and astonishment, to gather a strong line of defense, and finally, to organize a counter flank movement under Stonewall Jackson, which fell upon the rear of the Union right and created a panic in the Eleventh Corps. Sedgwick's force had crossed below and taken Fredericksburg; but the divided Union army could not effect a junction; and the fighting from May 1 to May 4 finally ended by the withdrawal of both sections of the Union army north of the Rappahannock. The losses suffered by the Union and the Confederate forces were about equal, but the prestige of another brilliant victory fell to General Lee, seriously balanced, however, by the death of Stonewall Jackson, who was accidentally killed by the fire of his own men.

In addition to his evident very unusual diminution of vigor and will, Hooker had received a personal injury on the third, which for some hours rendered him incapable of command; and he said in his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War:

"When I returned from Chancellorsville I felt that I had fought no battle; in fact, I had more men than I could use, and I fought no general battle for the reason that I could not get my men in position to do so probably not more than three or three and a half corps on the right were engaged in the fight."

Hooker's defeat at Chancellorsville had not been so great a disaster as that of Burnside at Fredericksburg; and while his influence was greatly impaired, his usefulness did not immediately cease. The President and the Secretary of War still had faith in him. The average opinion of his qualities has been tersely expressed by one of his critics, who wrote: "As an inferior he planned badly and fought well; as a chief he planned well and fought badly." The course of war soon changed, so that he was obliged to follow rather than permitted to lead the developments of a new campaign.

The brilliant victories gained by Lee inspired the Confederate authorities and leaders with a greatly exaggerated hope of the ultimate success of the rebellion. It was during the summer of 1863 that the Confederate armies reached, perhaps, their highest numerical strength and greatest degree of efficiency. Both the long dreamed of possibility of achieving Southern independence and the newly flushed military ardor of officers and men, elated by what seemed to them an unbroken record of successes on the Virginia battle-fields moved General Lee to the bold hazard of a second invasion of the North. Early in June, Hooker gave it as his opinion that Lee intended to move against Washington, and asked whether in that case he should attack the Confederate rear. To this Lincoln answered on the fifth of that month: